Word: realisms
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Like Garp, the new book is a startlingly original family saga that combines macabre humor with Dickensian sentiment and outrage at cruelty, dogmatism and injustice. Unlike Garp, Hotel aggressively links realism with the tone and symbolism of fable. Imagine a fairy tale dealing explicitly with rape, incest, prostitution and terrorism. Imagine the Brothers Grimm without the dense mythological overlay...
Unreal? Naturally. Bizarre? Of course. Irving takes considerable pleasure in bucking the normal expectations of an audience. The prevailing taste of most contemporary readers is for realism, especially when the technique applies to incredible romances and hollow documentary fiction. Garp proved that there was a large unfulfilled appetite for imaginative literature-for the athletically contorted novel that, nevertheless, rings emotionally and psychologically true...
Francis Coppola also spilled a lot of blood in The Godfather, adding his bit of realism to the lore of gore. Until he came along, special effects men would fire wax pellets filled with cosmetic blood at actors who were to be shot. When they were "hit," they would yell "ouch!" or whatever else the scriptwriter demanded. Blood oozed out and the audience usually got the point. But the pellets left a blotch on the skin, which was not realistic in closeups. Ever the perfectionist, however, Coppola wanted not only blood but bullet holes. Smith covered the actor...
...PROBLEM, of course, is that these are not foreign movies, they are Russian movies. They are Soviet movies. They are, in the end. Communist movies. Since most of our knowledge of Russian artistic life left off with socialist realism, we are notoriously nervous about watching these works. Socialist realism has about as much to do with Soviet Life as television has to do with Western life. Yes, it reflects social values. And yes, it is official. Only a fool would deny, too, that socialist realism, in some ways, presents role models. But why is it taken with such high-toned...
...Scorcese's genius, but how real is Taxi Driver? Mean Streets is realistic in the sense that it's harsh and gritty, but it's a victim of its own vision. Everything has to be hard-boiled, New York is a jungle. Life is a bitch. What passes for realism is more often than not a steamy fantasy with all the grotesqueries left in. They are, in most respects, not so much real life as parodies...